For Cub fans that need to vent...

[Gagnon39]

Please don't move this to the NLDS thread. Let Cub fans have a separate thread to vent in please. Stick it if you would like but this does not just partain to the 2008 NLDS.

Okay, let me start by saying that I have been a die-hard Cubs fan for a long time. I have numerous Cubs shirts, Cubs jerseys, every Cubs figurine, I even painted my garage all white with blue pin-stripes and a five foot Cubs logo on it. I put my "W" flag out every time the Cubs win, I watch every game on MLB Extra Innings, the whole nine yard. I am a Cubs fan, through and through. With that being said, I'm going to go ahead and vent a little bit. If you guys want to flame me that's fine but just know I'm no troll. I vented some to my wife, but she just doesn't understand. I had to convert her to be a Cub fan, which is something I regret. But anyway...

How in the world does a team not win a World Series in 100 years? I'm not saying that I believe in curses and all that mumbo jumbo but, come on. While the Yankees have achieved quite an accomplishment by winning 26 world titles the Cubs have achieved an accomplishment of their own. I mean, you almost have to try not to win a world series for an entire century. Teams stumble into the playoffs and stumble into the world series and and win them somehow every so often. Look at the 2006 Cardinals. 83 wins, 83! Then they beat an injury depleated Mets team and the Tigers hand them the World Series on a silver platter. No one will ever remember all of that, but they will remember that they won the World Series. Why can't that EVER happen to us!?

I feel pretty confident that we could win all 162 games during the regular season and not win a single game in the playoffs. The Cubs just can't win in the post season, I don't know what it is. Call me a traitor or a fair weather fan or whatever, but I am so angry at this team and organization that I wish I never became a Cubs fan. However, if you can switch your allegiance with a team, you were never really a fan in the first place. So with that being said, I'm sure I will die a miserable Cubs fan and never see them win a world series.

I live fairly close to St. Louis and my wife's family is from that area so I regularly attend Cubs and Cardinals games. How can any of us argue with any other fans from any other team that our team is better that their's is? I mean let's admit it, we are horrible. Plain and simple. I'm ready to confront the truth and say that the Cubs are one of the worst teams in professional sports, perpetual losers, year after year. No matter what players they bring in or what they try and do, something goes wrong. Every other team in the major leagues is better than us and from now on I will openly admit it. When someone says to me, "Cubs suck," my response will be, "yep, we sure do." When we make the playoffs, I will assume that we won't win a game. I will NEVER try to argue with any Cardinals fan, or any other fan of any other team regarding the Cubs. Because no matter which team it is, they are better than the Cubs. Take the Pirates for example, well at least they have won a World Seires in the past 100 years. The Royals, yep. The Rays, at least they can win playoff games and they haven't been around 20 years.

And nothing went wrong this year, we are just terrible. 97 wins, so what! We suck. Does anyone remember when the Seattle Mariners won 116 games in a season? Yeah, I didn't think so. No one does because they didn't do jack in the playoffs. So who cares.

Now let's talk about our players. Sorry-ano is a bum in the postseason. He is the biggest joke of a leadoff hitter I have ever seen. Why in the world does he bat first!? We have a leadoff hitter that rarely takes walks and strikes out all the time. The exact opposite of what a leadoff hitter is suppsed to be.

Derrek Lee is worthless and is only good for hitting into double plays. Our pitching is mediocre. And Fukudome, oh my God. Do I really even need to say anything about him? Our entire team was dead on the bench with no life at all since we got down in game one. It is pretty pathetic when your best player is a career utility man...DeRosa.

For my final rant I will just say that I wish I was not a Cubs fan. I wish there was something I could do about it. I honestly wish I could not watch them play anymore but its very similar to a train wreck. I just can't help but look. So here's to an eternity of feutility. I have a newborn son and I honestly can't think of a worse life-long burden to put on him than for him to become a Scrubs... I mean Cubs fan. When he is old enough I will be sure to let him choose which team to follow. And hopefully he will choose one that has a chance to win during his lifetime.

So go ahead and flame me but I'm just laying it out on the table. This team just can't win in the postseason and if you want to argue that just look at the past 100 years. History has to mean something, it is not just bad luck or a coincidence.

[sput]

Re: For Cub fans that need to vent...

I remember, in 1984, I was very, very young and I was watching when the Padres won the series. I was so upset because I couldn't understand why they couldn't play anymore. I cried for days.

In 1989 I watched my favorite Cubs team ever, anchored by Sandberg and Grace, go to San Fran and get destroyed in nearly every facet of the game. I could understand that almost, seeing as though Will Clark was playing like a legendary ball player and the Cubs had a list of the scrubs on the field and bench.

2003 hurt. Bad. I sort of dropped out of life for awhile. Missed two weeks of college and stopped returning my friends' calls. People have said that's sort of extreme, but the impact of the loss was so bad I couldn't handle it at the time.

This year is different. This team seemed, all year, to be special. They won games they shouldn't have. The joy with which they played the game was infectious. I started hanging on every pitch and would rush out, whether afternoon or late evening when they were on a West Coast swing, and hang the W flag from my new house - a long time fantasy of mine - whenever appropriate. I fluctuate between believing in curses and not (I am a professor at a university and feel a very strong need to jettison superstition) and though that this, our hundreth year without a title, would provide perfect symmetry.

Then they go and do this. It was embarassing, lifeless, and it's almost too bad there's not another, greater word for utter, and total abject failure. Soriano failed, as he's prone to do. Fukodome looked like a complete waste of a contract and a uniform, Theriot was weak, Ramirez looked foolish, and Reed Johnson, the sparkplug who kept us all entertained with his amazing defense and uncanny, timely hitting, sat the pine for three horrible, awful games.

Who's not to blame: Derrek Lee. No, he doesn't have power anymore and he needs to be moved out of the three hole. Fifth, maybe. Maybe even second. Soriano, as worthless as he is, we've got him for another six years and he could do to move to third or fourth where he'll be protected by another bat. Pitchers are not afraid to throw him a 3-2 slider in the dirt because he'll either swing or he'll walk and Theriot/Fukodome/Fontenot will be right behind him to ground or fly out. Lee, on the other hand, hit .500 this series. In the first inning last night he tried to get us going, but Aramis suddenly remembered it was October and screwed it up.

Truth is, I've already wondered, a few days now, if I'll be able to remain a Cubs' fan. I think I will, but this is the first time I've ever thought of just giving up baseball. Of course, it's one of the things I enjoy most in the world and I can't believe I would be able to leave it behind. But I do know that this regular season will be different. There's no chance I'll be swept up in "This is the year" bull****. I won't hang on every pitch and buy into the whole "there's something special about this team" rhetoric. I'll be cynical, that's for certain.

Anyway. The team has to be restructured. It's too early, honestly, for me to even try and suggest how. That'll be saved for this winter, and what a long, cold, cruel winter it'll be.

-J

[Gagnon39]

Re: For Cub fans that need to vent...

Amen. You sound just like me. I relate the Cubs to a relationship with a dream girl. It is like meeting some amazing woman who you fall in love with. She is so beautiful and wonderful and even though there are a few bumps and bruises along the way you image the day that you will be married and have a family and live happily ever after. However as your wedding day draws near she comes to you and tells you that she has been banging your best friend. You are devestated. To make matters worse, your best friend comes by and kicks you in the nuts. You squirm around in pain and he laughs at you and then your ex-girlfriend comes by and points at you and laughs. Humiliated, you pick yourself up and cry yourself to sleep for the next two months. And time goes on you learn how to move on. Once you feel that you are getting over the pain, there she is, at your doorstep asking you to forgive her. And she looks, oh so lovely. You think to yourself, it will be different this time. Somehow better and it will work out. Like a moron you get back together with her and things are wonderful...and low and behold, the cycle repeats itself. This is the life of a Cubs fan.

Every year we think, "this could be it" and then it never happens. It probably never will happen. But for some reason I get sucked into it every year. Well, much like you said, not anymore. I will watch the Cubs next season with the mindset that this is not our year. Nor will it ever be. Here's to another 100 years of feutility.

[pfunk880]

Re: For Cub fans that need to vent...

Isn't there a Cubs team thread for this?

[Gagnon39]

Re: For Cub fans that need to vent...

No. This needs to be a separate thread. Don't try and take this away from us. Just let us complain.

[ZM Punk]

Re: For Cub fans that need to vent...

Isn't there a Cubs team thread for this?

No one made you come in here. Thread topic is pretty self explanatory.

[ShowtimeSpicer]

Re: For Cub fans that need to vent...

I've been a Cubs fan since 2000, so I hope I've been around the block enough to be considered up there with the rest of us miserable Cub fans. I'll admit I was apart of all the hype come July, but then it seemed we just cooled down. We started losing games, and while we'd win them back a few weeks later, it didn't matter. It seemed to me like we got burnt out and fed ourselves off of the hype too early, and that's really what gets me.

I remember 2003 like it was yesterday. It was the Cubs year, and we haven't gotten over ourselves. I know half, maybe more than half, of the Chicago Cubs fan population hasn't even though of forgiving Steve Bartman, even though it wasn't his fault at all. It seems that the fans and team has indulged itself so much into the "curse" that they can't do anything in the playoffs. I saw it last year against the Diamondbacks, and again this season against the Dodgers. It's like we do not think we can win.

While it's alright for the fans to think this way, there's no means acceptable for players to indulge in these superstitious beliefs. Come on, we had playoff experience, we had the mindset, we had the manager, we just fell short. Is the curse really existent?

While I don't want to believe about it, I wonder so much how this team didn't win, and want to point fingers but can't. What is wrong with this team?